Murder
by Auditory Eden
Summary: The first of my supplication one-shots. Fairly what-if-y, not much plot to speak of.


It was not the way she'd dreamt it would be.

It was not the way she'd thought and hoped and prayed it would be, the next time she saw him again after that awful night, the catastrophe at the opera.

Christine had dreamt that when they met again it would be in the depths of the opera house, some place dark and rich and full of music, as the Garnier had always been. That he would be whole again; perhaps not his face restored to true, full, handsome normalacy, but composed, without the scattered, stumbling brokenness she'd seen that night on the lake. His evening dress neat and his mask the blank white expanse she'd come to know.

After that passionate kiss in the bowels of the opera, the half-fevered nature of it, how it left her drunk on his scent and his taste, the taste of music, she'd thought many a time of how they might meet again.

She did not expect the place to be a dark, though clean, alley between the _boulangerie_ and the stationary on la Rue de la Provence. She did not expect him to be slumped over, gasping for breath.

She certainly not expect him to have a knife between his ribs.

At first the Comtesse did not recognize him, or at least could not be sure it was him. Then she caught sight of his profile, hidden behind the fedora, and the slightest hint of white at its border, and she'd known that it was Erik.

The words had slipped from her lips before she'd been able to stop them, and their hushed, horrified tone had drawn his eyes immedeatly.

"_Angel?_"

His gaze, the bright green piercing gaze, snapped to her face even as it clouded over with the detatchment of the dying. Her name was formed, trembling, on silent lips.

Her next words had been screamed. "_Erik! Erik! Someone, help!_"she'd called, as she'd thrown herself to his side, crouched in the alleyway, her screams drawing a crowd as people gathered to asses her plight. Someone called for a doctor, their tone frantic at the sight of the blood Erik was drenched in. Christine had embraced him as gently as she could, half her mind on the blood—oh, _god_, no one could loose that much blood—and half on objectively assessing the wound. She heard a weezing cough, and her fear was confirmed; his lung had been punctured.

"Oh, Erik," she whimpered over his prone form. He narrowed his visible eye at her, seeming to say, even in his weakness, _I do not need your pity_. Again he tried, and failed, to say her name. Christine was weeping quietly now, and she had torn fabric from one of her garments to try and staunch the flow of blood from his wound as she craddled his head. He coughed, and she tried to help him sit up a bit. The movement made him wince and weeze, and she bit her lip, praying that the doctor would arrive in time.

This newer position did allow him slightly better control of his diaphragm, and he managed to choke out the words, "Leave me, Christine."

She glared at him indignantly and rebuffed him. "If you think I will leave you ever again, you are sore mistaken." He rewarded her with a wry smile, then doubled forward as he began to cough again, blood now spilling from his lips. She inhaled sharply and placed her arm around his broad shoulder, supporting his weight as best she could. He glanced at her again and told her, "You may as not bother. I suspect I am not long for this world."

She hushed him, like a mother reproving a child, ironic as she had none. "Don't say that," she half-ordered, half-begged him. "Don't say that now."

"Why ever not?" he croaked, breath gasping. "It is true, and you will be freed of me at last."

"I never wished to be free of you," she told him. "It was you who sent me away. Now hush, you should not speak."

He ignored her, of course. "Christine, if it is true, if you ever loved me, let me die hearing your voice."

She did not remark on his statement, that he was dying, but began to sing to him, as his strength quickly faded and the dagger sucked the life from the man in her arms.

When his green eyes finally clouded over, his face grown cold and his skin whiter even then it had been before, she trailed away, her tone almost amazed.

Then the screaming began, just as the doctor came running into the alley, prepared to save the life of a dead man. He found a well-dressed, beautiful young woman craddling a corpse with a white mask, shreiking at the form in her arms.

"_Erik!"_ she screamed, over and over, then twice she cried, "I loved you, _I loved you_!" before her wails broke off into awful sobbing. The crowd at the mouth of the alleyway chattered.

Many hours later, when the body of the late Phantom of the Opera had been taken away, and her husband called, Christine sat in the office of the gendarmes, while her husband, as of yet unaprised of the situation, surveyed her blood-soaked appearance.

"Mon dieu, Christine," Raoul muttered as she stared ahead, mutely. One of the gendarmes assured him the blood was not hers, but belonged to a recently murdered man, and could Monsieur le Comte perhaps identify the victim, as not a sensible word had been extracted from his wife, who seemed to know the man _quite intimately—_a leer loomed behind the tone—when she'd been holding the dying man, poor bastard.

"She said, 'I loved you, I loved you', and we haven't heard a word from her since," the officer told her husband, as they stood in the morgue, wating for the body to be brought out. "And it's very strange, the man, the victim, I mean, there's this mask, and none of us are brave enough to remove it." The officer shuddered as the body was brought forth, a shape on a rolling table, covered by a white sheet.

When the sheet was pulled back from the half-masked face, the curse rose again to Raoul's lips.

"Mon _dieu_."

He stared at the face of his deceased enemy for a long time, then motioned for them to cover the face once more.

"His name," Raoul began, "I do not know. That man is the Phantom of the Opera, for whom the Surete have searched for so long."

"She called him Erik," the officer remembered aloud, and Raoul shrugged.

"Perhaps that is his name," he stated. "She would know it, if anyone did."

A noise at the door to the morgue made them both turn, and there stood Christine, her dress still soaked with the Phantom's blood, her eyes wide. Words, hesitating and barely audible, fell from her lips. "May I see him?"

Raoul stepped back imedeately to allow her past, and the officer nodded as well. The woman drifted past both of them, and lifted the sheet from the face of the dead man.

Both men watched in detatched horror as she stroked the face, the strong jaw and hawkish nose, the line of one ear, and the officer caught his breath as she leaned in and lifted the mask.

Raoul turned his face away from the sight, and the gendarme exclaimed at the sight of the scars. Christine ignored both men as she ran her fingers over that thing he had called an infection, and then she kissed the dead man's lips, remembering them warm and pliant, not stiff and chill with the cool fingers of death.

"I love you," she whispered into his cold mouth, then stood and replaced the mask, the sheet. Then she collapsed into a dead faint.

From the time that she woke from that faint, to her death three years later, the Comtess Christine de Chagny, nee Daae, never spoke another word.


End file.
